The Anhui Fare Festival in Beijing offers diners not only a myriad of authentic dishes from Anhui province, but also a chance to experience the local culture. [Photo Provided to China Daily]

The festival has top chefs from Anhui preparing delicacies for Beijing's diners, and the culinary team uses the best and freshest ingredients it can access, and cooks the food following authentic recipes and traditional methods.

The delicacies offered the day I was at a tasting were very impressive and showcased the essence of Anhui cuisine. The dishes had ingredients sourced from Anhui, and many foods were cooked and served in the same pots.

The cuisine is characterized by cooking techniques that go beyond frying - such as simmering, stewing and steaming. It features oil and soy sauce, but is very good at preserving the ingredient's original flavors.

The cuisine is also involves heating different foods to different temperatures to bring out the best flavors.

When you speak of Anhui cuisine, you cannot avoid the smelly mandarin fish, which as its name suggests, smells awful.

Legend has it that the dish originated about 200 years ago when businessmen transported the expensive fish from the Yangtze River in wooden casks to sell it in the mountains.

To keep the fish from going bad, they marinated the fish in salt and accidentally created the signature dish of Anhui cuisine.